Acceptable... to whom?

How do you convince a child by logic or reason when he has not yet learned to apply logic or to reason, himself? How do you convince a child by logic or reason when he is still ruled by emotion?

People are individual. The way my parents raised my two brothers had to be very different from the way they raised me, because we were very different.

Are you going to actually engage in debate here, or just resort to immature insults and personal attacks? If you think I'm wrong about a particular point, then explain to me why you think I'm wrong, and let's discuss the issue like adults.

I knew that I had read that passage before. Great wisdom, even from a Navy man.

That's your opinion. Like assholes, everyone has one, and most of them stink.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DioQooFI...

No, they teach their children that actions have consequences.

""My apologies. Your textbook does so state. But calling a tail a leg does not make the name fit ‘Juvenile delinquent’ is a contradiction in terms, one which gives a clue to their problem and their failure to solve it.
Have you ever raised a puppy?"
"Yes, sir."
"Did you housebreak him?"
"Err... yes, sir. Eventually." It was my slowness in this that caused my mother to rule that dogs must stay out of the house.
"Ah, yes. When your puppy made mistakes, were you angry?"
"What? Why, he didn’t know any better; he was just a puppy.
"What did you do?"
"Why, I scolded him and rubbed his nose in it and paddled him."
"Surely he could not understand your words?"
"No, but he could tell I was sore at him!"
"But you just said that you were not angry."
Mr. Dubois had an infuriating way of getting a person mixed up. "No, but I had to make him think I was.
He had to learn, didn’t he?"
"Conceded. But, having made it clear to him that you disapproved, how could you be so cruel as to spank him as well? You said the poor beastie didn’t know that he was doing wrong. Yet you inflicted pain. Justify yourself! Or are you a sadist?"
I didn’t then know what a sadist was — but I knew pups. "Mr. Dubois, you have to! You scold him so that he knows he’s in trouble, you rub his nose in it so that he will know what trouble you mean, you paddle him so that he darn well won’t do it again — and you have to do it right away! It doesn’t do a bit of good to punish him later; you’ll just confuse him. Even so, he won’t learn from one lesson, so you watch and catch him again and paddle him still harder. Pretty soon he learns. But it’s a waste of breath just to scold him." Then I added, "I guess you’ve never raised pups."

"Many. I’m raising a dachshund now — by your methods. Let’s get back to those juvenile criminals. The most vicious averaged somewhat younger than you here in this class... and they often started their lawless careers much younger. Let us never forget that puppy. These children were often caught; police arrested batches each day. Were they scolded? Yes, often scathingly. Were their noses rubbed in it?
Rarely. News organs and officials usually kept their names secret — in many places the law so required for criminals under eighteen. Were they spanked? Indeed not! Many had never been spanked even as small children; there was a widespread belief that spanking, or any punishment involving pain, did a child permanent psychic damage."
(I had reflected that my father must never have heard of that theory.)
"Corporal punishment in schools was forbidden by law," he had gone on. "Flogging was lawful as sentence of court only in one small province, Delaware, and there only for a few crimes and was rarely invoked; it was regarded as ‘cruel and unusual punishment.’ " Dubois had mused aloud, "I do not understand objections to ‘cruel and unusual’ punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose, his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment — and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism?
However, that period was loaded with pre-scientific pseudo-psychological nonsense.
"As for ‘unusual,’ punishment must be unusual or it serves no purpose." He then pointed his stump at another boy. "What would happen if a puppy were spanked every hour?"
"Uh... probably drive him crazy!"
"Probably. It certainly will not teach him anything. How long has it been since the principal of this school last had to switch a pupil?"
"Uh, I’m not sure. About two years. The kid that swiped — "
"Never mind. Long enough. It means that such punishment is so unusual as to be significant, to deter, to instruct. Back to these young criminals — They probably were not spanked as babies; they certainly were not flogged for their crimes. The usual sequence was: for a first offense, a warning — a scolding,
often without trial. After several offenses a sentence of confinement but with sentence suspended and the youngster placed on probation. A boy might be arrested many times and convicted several times before he was punished — and then it would be merely confinement, with others like him from whom he learned still more criminal habits. If he kept out of major trouble while confined, he could usually evade most of even that mild punishment, be given probation — ‘paroled’ in the jargon of the times.
"This incredible sequence could go on for years while his crimes increased in frequency and viciousness, with no punishment whatever save rare dull-but-comfortable confinements. Then suddenly, usually by law on his eighteenth birthday, this so-called ‘juvenile delinquent’ becomes an adult criminal — and sometimes wound up in only weeks or months in a death cell awaiting execution for murder.You — "
He had singled me out again. "Suppose you merely scolded your puppy, never punished him, let him go on making messes in the house... and occasionally locked him up in an outbuilding but soon let him back into the house with a warning not to do it again. Then one day you notice that he is now a grown dog and still not housebroken — whereupon you whip out a gun and shoot him dead. Comment, please?"
"Why... that’s the craziest way to raise a dog I ever heard of!"
"I agree. Or a child. Whose fault would it be?"
"Uh... why, mine, I guess."
"Again I agree. But I’m not guessing."

- Robert A. Heinlein, "Starship Troopers"

While I agree with Heinlein, he distorts the Constitutional meaning of "cruel and unusual" punishment. "Cruel" meant punishment performed for the sake of inflicting suffering, alone. "Unusual" meant singling an individual out for different punishment than the statute of a crime would call for generally.

Ah, the nature v nurture gambit - the problem is that nature drives nurture. You seem to think that corporal punishment is anti-nature. Force is used everywhere in nature. Bacteria attack healthy cells, plants crowd out other plants to gain favor of sunshine and water, animals kill others for food, and merely for practice (I have 2 cats who are fed quite well by their girth. They are always bringing me mice and vols that they have killed - not because they are hungry, but because it is their nature to hunt).

We humans are animals first. We use force instinctively. I spanked my children to emphasize a point, and now as young adults in their early 20's they are well behaved, polite, respectful people. The spankings that they received did not make them bullies or psychopaths out to hurt others. On the other hand, I've observed other parents that swore they'd never hit their children whose little brats seemed to learn that there was never a consequence to their actions and were bullies and have grown up to be reprobates.

Not sure why you're getting dinged, but my original comment isn't (or maybe it is and it's getting more ups than downs).

Um... do you even know what the non-aggression principle is? Based on your statements, I'm beginning to doubt that you're actually familiar with the term...